


the vicious circle.

by epistretes



Series: Aquaphilia [5]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Aquaphilia, BAMF Sif, Death, F/M, Faked Death, Grief, Loss, Masturbation, Thor Is a Good Bro, Thor misses Loki, bathtub masturbation, because sex IS messy, canon character death, going to Valhalla, gushing, messy sex, might be sif's imagination might be loki using magic!masturbation, prisons, sif discovers loki is a laufeyson, sif gets off to jotunn!loki, thor and sif are besties, thor misses jane
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:31:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistretes/pseuds/epistretes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sif learns to cope before the worlds get turned upside down, again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the vicious circle.

Numb. That was the only word for it. She was entirely numb. Only in the training arena or on the battlefield did she come to life. Her sword or glaive in hand, a primal need to hurt and destroy came over her. Men quailed when they realised that she was drawn as their opponent and she sent them all to their backsides with efficiency and ruthlessness.

When the battlefield was real, she reminded herself that Loki had caused this, that she had been unable to stop him. The bloodlust that came upon her then meant that only the most foolhardy or convinced of their own prowess dared take her on.

One night, after some rebels had been defeated on Àlfheimr, she retired to her room and soaked in the bath until her muscles had loosened again. If she had remained there until her face was dry, she would not admit it. She merely needed the bath. The water had swirled around her and reminded her of cool fingers on her skin.

Getting out and drying herself, she pulled on her night gown and thought to just sleep, forgoing the revelry of the win. Her plans were dashed when she found Thor sitting on her bed.

"Thor, forgive me but I am in no mood for revelry this night." She told him, her voice flat.

"I know you miss him," the big man replied and she managed to hold herself and not flinch.

"I know not of what you speak." She retorted dismissively.

"Sif, I _know_. Even if I had not already known that you and Loki were lovers, the look on your face on the bifröst that night would have told me." She did flinch that time.

"Thor, I-"

"You do not need to make excuses. I have known since he returned from Àlfheimr and gifted you that remarkable dress." Sif sagged down beside him on the bed and he wrapped an arm around her gently despite his bulk. "Had you made it public, I would have supported you as I always have. Little has given me more joy than knowing my two favourite persons had found each other's hearts match."

"I loved him," she admitted. "I didn't want to at first. I thought it was just... but it wasn't and now it has turned to lies and ashes in my mouth."

"I fear I must tell you something that will cause you pain at first, but some day the knowledge may help heal your heart. I do not wish you to hear it as idle gossip if it becomes known." A sick feeling snaked in to her gut and she braced herself.

"Loki was not born of Odin and Frigga. He and I never knew - but he discovered the truth and I fear it broke him." Whatever she had been half-expecting to hear, that had not been it. Adopted? Loki was not a blood prince of the realm? Suddenly Odin's preferential treatment began to make sense and she felt anger.

"Why? Whose son was he?" She wondered who would give up such a babe and why.

"Laufey's." If she had not already been sitting, that news would have knocked her on her backside.

" _Laufey_?! King of the jötunn... Loki killed his _own father_?" She had been privy to some truths but clearly not all of them.

"He did. Father told me that after the final battle, he ventured in to their temple and found a helpless child," Even Thor's boom was quieted to a quivering half-whisper. "Laufey's son. Small for a jötunn but the size of our infants. He had been exposed to die as a runt but Father took pity on him and cloaked his blue, scarred visage to resemble our own skin. He brought him home and Mother pretended to have been secretly pregnant during the fighting."

Those beautiful eyes, that soft pale skin that she had loved - all the while a lie? A lie even the Silvertongued Liesmith had himself been ignorant of. No wonder he had broken, even if she was angry he did not share his burden with her. How would she have reacted, if he had? She felt ill when she realised that she did not know. She closed her eyes and recalled the touch of his hair and the smell of it. Was that an illusion, also?

"How did he find out?"

"I only know that it was on Jötunheimr." Thor looked at her even as she stared at the floor.

"When they touched him!" She exclaimed, remembering his looking at his hand in the Healing Rooms, lifting her own and turning it over as he had. Thor looked at her for clarification. "In the Healing Rooms after your banishment, I noticed that he kept looking at his hand. He said that one of them had broken his wrist guard and he was just checking for a wound. They must have touched him and somehow dispelled the illusion."

"Father told me the illusion fell in the vault when he grasped the Casket of Ancient Winters and he was forced to own the truth." He acknowledged as he shook his head. "He should never have discovered it so. Had I not been so rash, I would have been here for him."

"No, Thor. He would still be living a lie. He would have yet discovered the truth some day." He sighed heavily and sounded defeated.

"I just feel so guilty. All these years when I made jokes of the Jötunn as savage beasts. I am certain he heard them all again when he discovered the truth. How can they be savage brutes if they could produce my little brother?" He turned to her, sadness rippling from him. "Even as he fought me, he had tears in his eyes. If only I had known why."

They stayed there half the night, talking of Loki and telling stories. They took comfort in the fact that someone else mourned as they did. Other than Odin and Frigga, none truly missed the Trickster and that pained them as much as his loss did. How isolated he must have felt in his final moments.

The next day, she went to see Heimdall.

"I would know if we have a body to retrieve," she told him, posture stiff. "It would mean the realms to Thor."

"I cannot see him. He is gone from my sight." The big man looked on her with pity but asked no questions. She was grateful for small mercies.

Months passed by and she slowly started to come back to life. In some ways she felt she had a better deal than Thor. The one she loved was gone and she could mourn. The one he loved was simply out of reach. He rarely spoke of Loki any more and she all-but refused to. Fandral even seemed to pick up on a vibe if he did not know exactly what it signified.

One day just as her heart had begun to mend, she was summoned to Thor's side. He was pale and looked like he might throw up any moment.

"Loki is... alive." Her heart stopped for a long beat and her legs threatened to turn to jelly.

"How? Where? How?"

"Three excellent questions. We do not know. Mother found a trace of him in her scrying and connected with him. He said he was busy and broke the connection."

"He _broke the connection_?!" Her disbelief flashed through her. Loki loved Frigga dearly.

"She said he looked unwell, disturbed in his mind and his body. She fears what may have happened to him." Thor confessed. "She sensed power before he terminated their contact."

"Heimdall..." she began.

"Mother consulted him even before she found me. If he is within Yggdrasil's boughs, he is shrouded from Heimdall."

"We have to find him and bring him home."

\------

Loki was invading Midgard. Heimdall had seen him burst in to view and start slaughtering or controlling the mortals he saw. Odin had cloistered himself before emerging with a tale of an army known as the Chitauri with which Loki meant to subjugate the mortals.

Odin only had the power to send one through the boughs of Yggdrasil and so Sif had to wait. She hospitalised four warriors before someone mustered the nerve to tell her that perhaps she ought to stay off of the training fields for now.

Her mind was filled with worry and she sought out Heimdall for status updates. Loki was captured, Loki was manipulating all around him, Loki had murdered a mortal friend to Thor. Sif stamped it all down as best she could. What had happened to him?

As he rampaged through New York, she rampaged through the citadel. As he slaughtered and betrayed, she worried and smashed crockery. Finally, it was over. She heard the courtiers that had been thrown from the court to make way for Loki to receive judgement. She hastened to the doors but could not gain access. It was infuriating. She had a right to know... except Odin was unaware of that and it was unlikely that he would care if he did.

The first glimpse she got of Loki threatened to rip her heart out. He was paraded past the crowd in chains, surrounded by Einherjar, some of which held him like a beast. He deserved it, that she knew, but it hit her like a punch to the gut. He really _was_ alive. Nothing like actually seeing him had really made it hit home that he was not dead and gone and yet he was mere feet from her and further than ever before.

He looked her way and her heart beat a little faster, worry snaking through her whole being. Their eyes caught for the briefest of moments and she saw his eyes widen before he broke the contact and was taken down the stairs under the citadel towards the dungeons. It was real. He was alive, he was a prisoner and she would never see him again.

She turned away from the scene and walked back to her rooms. She could not bear to linger. When she got to her rooms, she broke the bathroom door off of the hinges as she went to her water basin and splashed cold water on her face and the back of her neck. He was alive, but he was still out of her reach. She had to conquer this.

The All-Father forbade unnecessary visits to the prisoner and she had no way of getting in to the dungeons without the Einherjar reporting back. She could almost feel him beneath her feet as the days spiralled on. Only being sent away helped. When Hogun's home realm, Vanaheimr, was attacked she led the defence. She thrilled in the action, in taking the lives of those who would terrorise and pillage innocents. It was an outlet for her pain and rage.

That night as she retired (after trying to convince Thor to make merry, after all, she was hiding it better than he), she felt Loki in her mind. He was pressing on her, trying to reach her. It was as though he was chastising her for not visiting him in his cell. She knew what he had done on Midgard. She had been the one to piece Thor back together afterwards, after all. It had rankled to see Odin look so satisfied by that. Thor had been a balm for her in return, after all. They were both forcibly separated from the ones they loved.

Loki pressed in more on her mind. She could almost hear him, words forming in her mind.

"You have not asked after me..." the phantom echo resounded. She wondered if she were going crazy.

"Go away," she grit out to no one and no one replied. Sighing at her own overactive imagination, she drew herself a bath and settled in it. The water shifted around her as she rested her head back against the side. A little wave crested against her but did not break. It swirled back and down, creating a miniature whirlpool that rushed past her wet skin.

"Loki, no," she told the water and the whirl stopped. She could not help herself though, the remembrance of him and how they once were caused her fingers to move down and she spread herself. She imagined that he was watching, that she was not just letting her yearning for him take her over and see signs of him when there were none.

Teasing and rubbing at herself as he had done many times in this small tub, she remembered the smell of his skin, the feel of his silken hair. She recalled his eyes and when she closed her own, they bled from white and green to a ruby red, sclera and all. Blue spilled from the red eyes and flooded his skin. In the moment of shock as she realised what was happening, she peaked.

The phantom presence winked out from her mind as she came, relief flooding both her body and soul. In the moments after when she caught her breath, she felt uneasy. She could not shake the feeling that Loki had been there, that he was testing her resolve. She lifted her hands from the water and looked at them before getting out of the water entirely.

The next three nights ended the same way, a feeling like he was watching her spread across her and she lay in her tub, touching herself. She moaned his name softly as she brought herself to shuddering completion as his face changed in her mind's eye to what she imagined he might look like without Odin's gift.

She realised his being jötunn and not Æsir meant nothing to her; he was still simply _Loki_. That was not what separated them now - and what did separate them now could surely be fixed? All she had to do was figure out how. Unfortunately, Loki himself had always been better at that sort of thing. Determined to make a start, she got out of the tub and headed for bed.

When she was woken to discover that the mortal, Jane Foster, was in Asgard, she cursed her bitter luck. Thor would no doubt be delighted to show her his realm but Sif was disquieted. Odin-King would not approve and the mood he was likely in would not allow leeway for her to visit the dungeons.

Seeing the mortal under Queen Frigga's protection as they headed to defend the citadel from the dark elves sent a troubling feeling through her. She wanted Thor to be happy, his face was made for smiles, but Jane being here was dangerous. Something was off about having a mortal that had not tasted of Iðunn's apples here on the Realm Eternal.

She fought and slew any dark elf that crossed her path, but it was not enough. Never had the Einherjar seen Lady Sif cry before and yet when they did, it was through their own tears. Their Queen, their beloved Queen, had been slain. Their only balm that she had died in battle and was assured eternity in Valhalla.

The dead were led by their Queen to the eternal feast halls and Sif was amongst the mourners. She let the soul light free and tears gathered in her eyes for Frigga, for Thor, for Odin-King ... and for Loki. He neither knew nor was permitted to attend.

Even as they mourned such senseless death, Thor had a problem to deal with and Sif wanted to help. She needed to be useful but her part in it was not to her liking. Watching over Jane Foster as Loki was freed was not what she wanted but she acquiesced to her prince.

Loki would be a wounded animal, vicious and dangerous. She feared what he would be capable of without Frigga to restrain him any more. She was Lady Sif. She was a warrior of the realm. She would do her duty by her Prince, even if she had to commit treason and threaten her lover to do it. She could not and would not let him worm his way in and make her break her resolve.

Steeling herself (knocking out some Einherji helped), she rescued Jane Foster from her confinement and led her to the rendezvous point. The girl had the gumption to slap Loki upon seeing him and Sif found some small amusement in the painful meeting.

"I like her," Loki teased his brother and the two walked away. Sif would not allow Loki to pass her by without him knowing that while she had a hand in freeing him that she stood by Thor.

"If you betray him, I will kill you," she warned him, trying to not notice how he presented his neck to her. A neck she had loved to lick and nibble not so long ago. He had usually presented like that just prior to some exceptionally kinky sex and judging by the way that he looked at her; he was thinking the same thing. She once again recalled how she repeatedly came in her bathtub at the thought of him and wondered if he really had been watching her touch herself at his memory.

"It's good to see you too, Sif," oh how seductive his tone was and Sif glared at him before turning her back. Her definite sexual frustration would be channeled non-fatally to those who tried to storm her now as he followed Thor. Always following Thor, just as she did, even when he clearly pretended not to.

A memory of Loki's lips on her skin thrilled through her as she clothes-lined a foolish Einherjar that tried to rush past her. Loki's breath teased her ear as she used the momentum of him going down to reverse punch the next fool. Had she been truly fighting them as a foe, they would be dead. They needed to be shown the error of their ways - and painfully so.

Loki's tongue slid from the arch of her feet up the inside of her leg and ghosted across her slit and up to her hip bone in physical memory as she brought her knee up to knock her next opponent to the side. His tongue on her pert breasts, another man turned aside that rather comically knocked himself out on a pillar. 

Some of the throng got past her out of sheer numbers but she only needed to slow them down for Volstagg. She could still feel Loki all over her and she was sure that he was manipulating her with magic but she found no reason to block him out. She missed him, she still desired him and if this was really him and not just her imagination run wild, then so be it. 

Ducking under a wild punch, she brought her knee up and her clasped fists down to knock the idiot (an ex-lover she noted as she broke his nose) clean out. She walked away now, hearing the unmistakable sounds of Thor taking off as the pressure in her loins grew. Loki's fingers in her hair, his whispered endearments in her ear, his scent wafted around her. She bashed her door open with force and slammed it back to again as she ripped off her trousers and lifted her armoured skirt as she collapsed face-first on her bed spread.

Her fingers found her wet sex and plunged inside with one hand as the other teased her swollen nub. She had once allowed him to take her like this on this very bed. Her face down, breathing in the scent of the fabric as he had mounted her roughly and eagerly from behind. They had rutted with such abandon that she had feared for the integrity of her very sturdy bed frame.

He had been so full of passion and she recalled, even as her body tensed, that it had been their first time in her room. It had certainly not been the last. No, after they had recovered, she clearly remembered flipping him on to his back and taking her own turn right then.

Just as she was about to peak, the feeling of him all around her disappeared suddenly and she guessed he had left Asgard. Two more strokes and she came with a harsh, ragged cry. Her whole body spasmed as she gushed all over her pretty bed spread. Her body trembled with the aftershocks and she sagged down, heedless for a moment of the mess she had made.

After a long moment and as her backside got cold, she stood and cleaned herself before redressing. She was just contemplating what to do with her sodden spread when there was a knock at the door.

"Lady Sif, you have been bound for treason by Odin All-Father. You will accompany us to the cells." The words were hard but the voice cracked and she ignored him and spied Fandral behind the guard, looking cheerful.

"Thor got away?" She asked.

"He did. I shall have to regale you with the tale of Loki falling on his backside. It was most amusing."

"Then to the cells it is. Attempt to cuff me," she forestalled the second youth who stepped forward "and I will feel no remorse in breaking both of your hands."

Fandral and Volstagg laughed as she strode forward and marched them all to the cells and even oversaw their confinement.

"Where is my brother?" She asked as the golden walls fired up and glimmered around them.

"He was deemed necessary for security and has had his sentence demurred."

"Sensible," she waved them off and turned to Volstagg. "We might as well make ourselves comfortable until Thor returns."

A boring night would have been had save for Fandral's tales and Sif awoke to a simple breakfast, eagerly awaiting news. The universe had not ended, so he had likely been successful. If he was delaying their release in favour of one of a different sort with his mortal, she would have no compunctions in rendering his genitalia useless for days.

When he came at last, her breath hitched in her throat at his expression. She had been facing the doors and her sudden cease of interest in his tale caused Fandral to look round.

The guard let Thor in before leaving them alone at a signal from the prince

"The worlds are safe. The aether is contained, Malekith is dead, the Kursed is no more and my mortal friends aided me in the victory." His tone was flat though and they all noticed.

"Where is our cell-mate?" Fandral asked, hesitantly even though he was clearly going for his usual jovial tone.

"Loki protected Jane from Malekith. He did everything I asked of him and he killed the Kursed."

"He killed that thing?" Volstagg sounded impressed.

"Yes. He killed the brute that took our Mother." Sif saw him glance at her and she feared her heart might stop at the look in his eyes. "Now he has gone to join her in Valhalla."

All heads turned to Sif when they heard a cracking then smashing sound as the cup that had been in her hands shattered under the force of her grip. She knew she needed to cover for herself and she scrambled her wits back together.

"So, Malekith is truly dead? I am glad your brother could aid in his own way." The look of sympathy and pity Thor gave her hurt as much as the cut to her hand did. Their release, Thor's explanation of needing to be with Jane for a time, the journey back to her cleaned bedroom; none of it sank in.

As the door closed behind her, she sank on to the bed and let the tears flow. He had finally been the hero she knew was buried deep down inside. Perhaps when they were some day reunited in Valhalla she could tell him just how much he had meant to her.

_______

The very next morning, with Thor gone and her treason so fresh, she had not expected a summons from Odin-King.

"Lady Sif." He greeted her and dismissed the Diar. "While you have now committed treason against the rightful King of Asgard, I believe it was done through a loyalty to its heir."

Sif started in confusion, but dared not interrupt.

"Thor is gone to his mortal, Loki is dead and my... my Frigga is in Valhalla. I have need of loyalty. I have need of _you_."

"Yes, my liege." She dropped to one knee and pressed her fist to her chest.

"Swear to me that you will not commit treason a third time and I will hold you to your vow."

"I swear it."

"Then rise, Lady Sif, Commander of the Einherjar of Asgard."


End file.
